Rockwell City boasts of smooth streets, sidewalks

Hans Madsen

Reporter/photographer

hmadsen@messengernews.net

ROCKWELL CITY — When a visitor to Rockwell City drives around the city square — with the Calhoun County Courthouse and the Calhoun County Freedom Rock on display — one thing they’ll quickly notice is what they’re not noticing.

Its a nice smooth ride, the street is wide and there’s plenty of parking.

Once they get to visit a downtown business, there’s a wide, smooth sidewalk.

Residents and visitors have been enjoying the infrastructure project since its completion.

It didn’t just include the pavement. The underground utilities were also upgraded.

Rockwell City Mayor Phil Heinlen had some good news about the project.

“It came in on schedule.”

Heinlen said that public feedback on the project has been positive.

“It’s been really good,” he said.

He said the new square should serve residents well.

“It’s very serviceable infrastructure that will last a lot of years.” he said.

He said that most of the business owners and operators he’s talked to have given the project good ratings as well. Some of them, during construction, had to use alternative accesses such as their back doors but everyone came through the construction period with their doors still open for business.

He hopes the new streets help attract potential businesses to downtown Rockwell City.

“I think so,” he said. “We were down to gravel in some spots. This is nice infrastructure, it’s nice looking.”

He said he’s now proud to show off his town’s downtown to visitors.

The downtown infrastructure project has also helped the Rockwell City Library, located along the northwest corner of the square.

Library Director Lisa Pohl said they made an upgrade after the project was finished.

“We just switched over to fiber optic internet,” she said. “It’s faster than we had and it has the potential to be superfast. We’re looking to the future.”

She said that digital services are in high demand by the library patrons. Many of them will come in with their own devices to take advantage of the library’s free Wi-Fi.

That even gets used after regular hours.

“We keep our wireless open 24/7” she said. “We see people sitting out front in their cars using it. Sometimes their schedule just doesn’t work with ours.”

The community’s children can still do some construction of their own when they visit the library.

“We got a whole ton of Legos,” she said. “We went every other week for three months, each session we would give them a challenge.”

For example, they might have to build a device to get themselves off an imaginary planet. Both space ships and time machines worked for that.

The Lego bricks are still there, awaiting the next series of Lego Club meetings.